Blind3d by th3 Light
by Ivette Boveda
Summary: An ordinary accident causes Charlie to have even more extraordinary abilites. Will he supress or embrace them? How will he come to terms? 28:Charlie finds himself having to answer hard questions.
1. Chapter 1

_a/n- The first 21 or so chapters of Blinded by the Light were written during earlier seasons, when I was more of a beginner when it came to writing Numb3rs ,fanfics.and were finished before the episode Mind Games aired._

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Charlie found himself in a hospital room, having no idea as to why he was there. At a chair nearby, slept his father. Black circles surrounded his eyes, and his clothes seemed wrinkled. Don, looking as disheveled, also slept in chair However, Charlie also saw several figures, of all ages surrounding his bed. He didn't recognize any of them, and why did the hospital let such a crowd into his room?

"What are you doing here?" he asked them.

Alan's eyes snapped open.

"Waiting for you to wake up!" his father said happily, giving Charlie a hug. He had awoken to his youngest son's voice and had figured that Charlie's question was a result of being disoriented from just having awoken from a three day coma. Seeing as Alan did not say anything about the people in the room, Charlie feared that he was hallucinating.

"Welcome back Buddy!" Don got up from his chair and also gave Charlie a hug.

"What happened to me?" he asked as he tried to sit up, but without much success.

"You don't remember?" Don asked worriedly.

"No" Charlie said after a moment.

"When you tried to install a new ceiling fan in your room you forgot to turn off the electricity" Don said.

"That's impossible" Charlie argued. "I would never do that!" Being absent minded was one thing, but forgetting something like that was another.

"Well you did" Don told his younger brother.

Alan got the attention of a nurse in the hallway .She in turn went to get a doctor.

Soon, the doctor came and gave Charlie a through checkup. First he flashed a small light into his pupils, causing Charlie to flinch. Then she asked him several questions.

"What year is it?"

"two thousand five" Charlie said. Suddenly, Charlie, had a vision which came to him like a tidal wave.

_"Come here you little snot!" the doctor yelled as the boy ran around the house. Soon he grabbed him. The boy screamed every time the metal buckle hit his back. Rage filled the man, who needed to be in control…._

"Who is the president?"

Charlie snapped out of his vision. "George Bush"

"What is your name?"

"Charles Eppes."

"Do you remember what happened to you?"

"No" Charlie answered thoughtfully. "But my brother told me"

"He seems to be in good shape, but I'd like to do some tests to make sure" he told them, as she made some notes on his chart. "I'm ordering an EEG and a CT scan to check for swelling in the brain. He should be able to leave in two days."

"Two days?" Charlie asked incredulously as he realized he only had bandages around his hands.

"Despite the fact that your body was thrown several feet, and you were electrocuted, you suffered no injury of any kind, aside from some second degree burns. We don't know why you were in a coma and that is why I am insisting on further tests Dr. Eppes." the doctor informed him.

"Dad found you unconscious and called 911" Don explained.

.Charlie did several calculations in his head. Statistically he was dead, or at least severely injured.

"Did you do CPR?"

"Didn't need to!" Alan said.

"You mean my heart didn't stop?"

"You had a pulse when I found you, thank God!"

"You were very lucky, Dr. Eppes" the doctor told him, as Charlie noticed the figures again, though shrugged it off as a side effect from whatever was in his IVs.

"Dad, could you bring me…." He started to say. Charlie needed to distract himself from the mysterious figures.

"No!" Alan told him firmly. "You will rest!"

"Why don't we watch some T.V?" Don suggested.

With a frown, Charlie turned it on and quickly flipped through the channels.

"You're making me dizzy!" Alan complained after a minute.

"Come on man!" Don sighed. "Pick something, anything!"

Resignedly, Charlie gave the remote control to Alan. Suddenly, a gruesome male figure got his attention and stood near his bedside. He carried his head, which spoke, in his hands.

"My body's at buried near Cal Sci." he told Charlie, who turned pale. Seeing crime scene photos could not have prepared him for having a dismembered human talking to him. "A student killed me."

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's notes: Thanks to all for your reviews! Enjoy the second Chapter**

"You okay buddy?" Don asked.

"Yeah..I..just. to.um need to rest…" Charlie vainly tried to focus on the television. He began to think that maybe the high voltage he was exposed to caused some brain damage. Meanwhile, the holter moniter, which keeps track of the heart of a patient and is used for victims of electrocution, showed that the heart was beating at an abnormal rate.

"Her name was Nina Kerensky." The head began. "She put my body in a freezer."

Charlie partially tuned him out by closing his eyes and doing calculations in his head. Alan and Don could hear him mumbling to himself. They both knew that something was deeply upsetting him.

"This isn't a good sign" Don said.

"I'll go get the nurse." Alan remarked.

Meanwhile dead man's face turned red, as his fists, which still held the head, shook. "This is just great! The one medium who can hear me is fucking rain man!" He started to walk away from the bed. "This ain't the last you've heard from me!"

"Charlie!" Don tapped him on the shoulder.

"What?" Charlie jumped.

"What are you doing?"

"Just doing some calculations that I promised Larry I'd work on" he lied, relieved that the decapitated man was not around, at the moment.

Just then, the nurse arrived; She called a doctor when she saw the reading on the holter moniter. However, by the time the resident arrived, Charlie's heart rate had gone back to normal.

As he slept, a few hours later, he dreamt about the decapitated man's murder.

_It was a Saturday night,. A man is in bed, when the woman pulls out a gun, with a silencer, and shoots him in the head at point blank range. She had been planning this but this seemed like the perfect moment. She had killed three other boyfriends. To make things interesting, she gets a hand saw and cuts off his head. The harsh sound of metal against bone seems to please her. When she is finished, she puts the body in a freezer, and buries the head in her backyard ._

Charlie woke up with a scream and began to understand what Don went through on a daily basis at his job.. Sweat soaked his face and hair.

"What's wrong?" Alan jumped from his chair. He had thought it better to stay.

"I-I just had a night mare." Charlie said. He seemed to be in a state of shock.

"What's going on?" the night nurse asked, cranky that a patient would interrupt her novel reading.

"I-I just had a nightmare." He repeated

"I'll get ya a sedative" She brusquely left him.

"Now do you believe me?" the decapitated man asked, knowing that Charlie had dreamt about what happened. "The Bitch still lives there!"

Alan tried to comfort him, but Charlie could not calm down and even threw up. When the nurse came back, she saw the mess, called a custodian, and went to get a resident on duty.

"I don't think the food agrees with me" Charlie lamely told the resident. He was afraid that his mental state would be doubted if he said that a nightmare caused him to throw up.

"He had a nightmare" Alan added to Chalie's vexation.

The resident, wrote some comments on the chart, made some orders to the nurse, and prescribed a sedative. He attributed the higher heart rate to the nightmare. An LVN went to change the sheets, and give him a new hospital gown.

The next day, Larry came to see him.

"It's great to have you back with us" he smiled at his colleague. "I would have come yesterday, but Don said that you needed your rest" Larry sat in a chair nearby, as a mysterious dead man's ghost, with blue eyes and red hair made fun of the physicist's twitchy gestures and facial expressions by copying them in an exaggerated fashion.

"How are my classes?" Charlie wanted to get his mind off things.

"Amita's been taking over your freshman and sophomore courses, but Dr. Fine's been doing the rest"

"Do you know a Nina Kerensky?" Charlie honestly hadn't. He asked see if he was hallucinating.

"She's one of my graduate students, why?" Larry asked.

"No reason" This caused Charlie to think. How does a hallucination, which presumably is a product of his own mind, know about someone Charlie hadn't known of nor met? Maybe he had heard the name once when he was tuning out, or just plain forgot?

All he knew was that he had the same nightmare that night.

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

Mercifully, he was given a stronger sedative, which dulled his senses. Eventually, Charlie was discharged as the various tests came out negative. However, it was recommended that Charlie rest for a few days at home

During his second morning back from the hospital, he got a visit from Finn Mongomery. His suicide had prompted Charlie to investigate the Cole Building downtown because he had believed that the student had been murdered. Mongomery's theories about the flaws had been correct.

"I ..um..found out that you became a medium …" the dead young man awkwardly said to Charlie as he sat in his living room. Alan was making breakfast. "And wanted to…thank you for what you did."

Charlie just looked at the late student with a deeply troubled face.

"Aren't you going to tell my wife that I was killed by my C.O?" a man in a marine officer's dress uniform asked. "I've been here since yesterday!"

"What about me?" the aforementioned decapitated man showed up and demanded.

"You gotta tell the cops that my body's buried in Bakersfield!" a woman went in front of the marine. "And that I was murdered by the same guy who killed that woman in Tujunga Lake with a machete."

Not able to take it anymore, Charlie retreated into the garage and began to work on P vs. NP. Unfortunately, the ghosts followed him there.

"You can't just ignore us!" the marine said, as Charlie began to set up chalk boards. He couldn't cope with the demands being put by what he thought were hallucinations.

"Tuning out the dead ain't as easy as tuning out the living!" the headless man said.

"What is he working on anyway? The marine asked as Charlie finished setting up boards and began to work.

"N vs. NP" Finn said. He had been an engineering student. "It's an unsolvable math problem."

"Actually I know the answer" the woman, named Sue said as the other ghosts looked at her. "It's forty two!"

"You're a fan of The Hitchhiker's Guild to the Galaxy aren't you?" Finn asked with a smile.

"Yeah."

Some hours later, Don tapped him in the shoulder. When he jumped and saw Don, Charlie noticed that the ghosts were not there, for now.

"You okay?" Don was still in the suit he wore to work. "Dad said that you've been here since this morning"

"Yeah..I um…just needed some time." Charlie said. "Is dinner ready?" He was happy to see that it was just him and Don. Plus, he suddenly realized just how hungry he was.

"Yeah."

Soon, the three Eppes men were at the dinner table. As they ate, Finn showed behind Alan, who sat across the table from Charlie

"Don't Panic" Finn told Charlie, who kept his eyes on the plate of meatloaf in front of him. "I got the others to lay off you for a while. It was the least I could do. I told them that you needed time to realize that we were not hallucinations."

"Charlie?" Alan noticed a troubled look in his younger son's eyes.

"Look, I know that you need proof before you'll believe that you can see the dead." Finn continued, but stopped when he noticed that Charlie abruptly got up, opened a cabinet, and took some sleeping pills, that had been prescribed to him. The mathematician had quickly figured out that any kind of depressant drug kept the nightmares, and the hallucinations away.

"I'm going to bed." Charlie informed his brother and father, who just stared at him.

TBC


	4. Chapter 4

"He should have stayed longer at the hospital!" Alan asserted, as he wrapped Charlie's dinner in plastic foil.

"The doctors said that he was fine." Don tried to comfort his father.

"Bah! What do doctors know about the human brain? Especially one like Charlie's" Alan retorted. He worried over his youngest son's mental state.

The next morning, Charlie woke up to Finn sitting on a chair in his room. Before the latter could speak however, the ghost of a woman, named Pilar, of Cuban descent, appeared. She had been kidnapped, and killed in Hialeah, Florida.

"I need you to tell the cops that they've got the wrong guy in custody" She began to say to Charlie.

"Leave him alone!" Finn yelled, as Charlie frantically took out paper and began to work on some equations.

"Who are you to tell me that?" the woman crossed her arms and glared at him.

"I'm his bouncer"

"Mediums don't have bouncers!"

"This one does!" Finn insisted. "Look, he hasn't accepted his new talents. Why don't you go harass another medium?"

"Like it's that easy." She snorted.

"I suggest you do what he says" Margaret Eppes, Charlie's mother, ordered with a stern face as she suddenly appeared. "Or risk facing a mother's wrath"

Seeing the family resemblance, hearing the tone and sensing the anger, Pilar backed away and disappeared. Just then, Charlie tentatively looked up from his work, and saw his mother.

"Mom?" his eyes began to water. Even if she was just a hallucination to him, the emotions were still bubbling up in waves. There were things he wanted to say. "I'm so sorry!" He began to cry.

"It's okay baby" she sat next to him.

"I should've been there for you" he sobbed. The area around his eyes began to swell and redden.

"It wasn't your fault" she told him gently. "That's how your mind works."

"I miss you!" he wept.

"Charlie, I found out about your new abilities." She began. Margaret had visited Charlie before, and had been happy that he had grown closer to Don. "I want you to embrace them"

"I wi-wish you were really mom's gh-ghost!" Charlie blubbered as the tears started to fall harder.

"Charlie, you need to listen to me." It broke her heart to seem him like this. "I'm going to prove to you that I am not a hallucination."

"But you are!" Charlie argued sadly.

"Logically, any hallucination you were to have would not know anything you don't."

Charlie nodded half heartedly.

"Okay, I want you to do the following. Go to your father's room, and open the bottom left hand drawer of the dresser. There you will see an envelope, in it is a photo of your father dressed as a clown, carrying your brother during his third birthday party."

"I've never seen or heard of that photo" Charlie said.

"That's my point. When you find it, then you will know that I'm really your mother, not some hallucination."

Charlie hesitated. Doing what a hallucination told you to do seemed like a bigger step towards madness than just having them say that they were murder victims who needed help or your dead mother.

"I'm not asking you to burn things" Margaret coaxed.

"You're asking me to go through my dad's personal stuff" Charlie countered. "My mother would never do that!"

"That's the only way I know how to …."

"Why isn't this picture in an album?" Charlie asked suspiciously.

"Because it embarrassed your father to no end." She told him. "When you see it, you'll understand."

After some more arguing, Charlie snuck into his father's room, opened the indicated drawer, got the envelope, which was yellowed with age, and opened it.

TBC


	5. Chapter 5

He stared at the picture for several minutes in disbelief. Then it hit him: he could see the dead, and most importantly, his mother. Choking down emotion, he quickly put the photo back, and ran to his room.

"It really is you!" he again burst into tears and intensely looked at her.

"Shh…" Margaret tried to comfort him, but there was so much pent up emotion that had been released now that Charlie knew that he indeed could talk to his mother. Her face also shed some tears.

"I'm so sorry!" he apologized again. Both of them sat on his bed. "When you got sick, I just couldn't stop working on it" His eyes became red and swollen again as the tears of grief, sorrow, and guilt went on.

"I understood" she said. Finn had decided to leave them alone.

"What do I do now?"

"When you are ready, there is someone I'd like you to meet."

"Who?"

"An experienced medium named Katrina." Margaret said. "I met her a few months ago. When I heard about your new abilities, I talked to her and she agreed to be your mentor. Her home is in Arcadia. You can go on your bike."

"I don't know…." Charlie tended to be wary of people. Besides, he just wanted to spend time with his mother.

"Honey, you're going to need guidance." She pointed out.

"I've got you" Charlie said.

"Remember when you were little and you had tutors?"

"Yeah"

"This is the same thing" she told him.

"Mom….." Charlie sighed.

"Do it for me." She said softly.

After some more coaxing, they both went to the woman's house. Margaret met Charlie at the front steps.

Gingerly, he rang the doorbell. Charlie would not have made this visit if someone other than his mother had asked him to.

"Hi! You must be Charlie!" a woman in her thirties said with a smile, then turned to Margaret "How are you?"

"Good."

Soon, they all went to the living room, where Charlie had a vision.

_"I'm not qualified to be his mentor." Katrina complained her husband in a messy kitchen. Her inability to say no to Margaret stemmed from the fact that her own children had some of the same gifts._

_" Just__ share your experiences with him" the man said as he grabbed a bottle of beer._

_"It's not that easy. He wasn't born with his abilities"_

_"You mean he got them because of a traumatic accident? Like in the Dead Zone?"_

_"Actually, he got electrocuted because he forgot to turn off the juice before installing a ceiling fan." She said, having dreamt about the incident the night before. "And there's more."_

_"What?"_

_"He's a genius mathematician." She said. "Ironic isn't it."_

_"Yeah.__ He should have known that the probability of getting electrocuted would be pretty high if he didn't turn off the juice." He joked as Katrina gave him a look._

Charlie snapped out of his vision to Margaret and Katrina staring at him.

"What makes you qualified to be my mentor?" he challenged. The vision had only increased his doubts.

"Charlie!" Margaret scolded, as Katrina realized that Charlie could also read minds.

"I've been able to hone my powers enough so that I can use them to help solve crimes." She told him, annoyed with his attitude. Katrina could sense that he didn't want to be there.

"I do the same thing with math" Charlie countered.

"I know." The hint of arrogance in his voice bothered her. "But not everything is numbers."

"Well it was nice meeting you" Charlie brusquelyreplied and angrily got up. "I have to prepare for my classes." He had read her mind again and found out that she thought that he was full of himself.

"Charlie!" Margaret called as he stomped towards the door.

TBC


	6. Chapter 6

"I'll see you at home, mom" Charlie called back as he slammed the front door behind him.

Sometime later, Alan, who was watching T.V in the living room, noticed that Charlie came into the house in a huff and wondered why.

"Larry came by while you were gone." He told Charlie, who instead of listening sat on the couch and brooded. However, his sulking was interrupted by a vision.

_His father is at a fancy restaurant, with a woman in her late fifties. Within seconds, Charlie recognizes her: Dr Ana. Bautista, a math professor at USC, whom he disliked for various reasons. _

_"Happy anniversary!" Alan pours some wine in her glass. _

_"We've only been married six hours!" she chuckled, as Alan shrugged. The woman is wearing a sleek, black dress._

_"Who would have thought that a chess game could lead to this moment?" he asked her softy, then added, tongue in cheek "Good thing I let you win"_

_"Keep telling yourself that" she laughed again._

Charlie returned to the present and a very worried Alan.

"You look like you've seen a ghost" he asked. Charlie's face had a look of horror.

"Actually, I could use ghostly visit right about now" Charlie responded. His hatred for this woman was that strong. They had clashed on various occasions on both academic and personal grounds.

Just then, Margaret appeared.

"Charlie" she began in a very serious tone.

" Don't" Charles replied, shaking his head.

"Don't what?" Alan asked, puzzled, thinking the comment was directed at him.

" Don't forget to….check the batteries of the smoke alarms" Charlie improvised.

"Isn't that supposed to be your job?" Alan raised an eyebrow. "This is your house"

"But you spend more time here than I do" Charlie kicked himself, and was thankful that he didn't say mom. "And you're the cook."

"He doesn't believe you" Margaret said.

"So…what did you do today dad?" Charlie changed the subject.

"I played chess with a very lovely woman in the coffee shop." Alan replied. "My usual opponent didn't show."

"Ch-Chess?"

"You know ,that board game with pawns ,knights, castles, bishops….."

"yeah …um..who won?"

"She did" Alan answered. "We're having a rematch tomorrow."

"What's her name?" Charlie asked with intense curiosity.

"Ana"

"So….is she retired like you are? Or in a field like…teaching?" Charlie needed to know. Could it be that he had seen a vision of the future? The probability of having all these coincidences at the same time were very low. If he could see the dead, why not the future?

"We only talked about chess and food" Alan said.

Don came by for dinner.

During the meal, another vision plagued Charlie

_Don, with Terry goes to a horrendous crime scene. The mutilated bodies of several kidnapped children are found in a dumpster. Charlie feels his brother's rage, nausea, and budding obsession to find the monster that did this. Don is the one who talks to the medical examiner and the beat cop who found the bodies. Frustration mounts as time passes and there are no leads._

"You okay buddy?" Don asked when Charlie's mind returned to what was before him. The mathematician seemed pale. Suddenly, Alan's chicken fricassee had lost its appeal to Charlie. Just then, Don's cell phone rang. The agent answered. Soon, he hung up and told them. "I gotta go."

"It's always hardest when kids are the murder victims" Charlie commented impulsively and grimly.

"The call was about a lead in a blackmailing case!" Don revealed so that Alan would not be upset. "What is with you, man?"

TBC


	7. Chapter 7

Don gave him a 'what the hell?' look and left the house.

"Where did that come from, Charlie?" Alan asked.

"Don seemedmore serious than usual during the phone call" Charlie explained lamely, wondering over possible reasons at to why the call had been about a blackmailing case. Firstly, and hopefully, he was wrong. On the other hand, it could be an event from the future, or a memory of Don?s that he picked up. What if what he saw was from one of those parallel dimensions or universes that Larry so loved to ramble about?

999

As Charlie put away the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, Finn appeared and said.

"I found out the answer to P vs. NP" he had decided to use this joke on Charlie.

"That's impossible!" Charlie exclaimed.

"What's impossible?" Alan asked from the living room, where he read.

"Nothing dad, I was just doing some figures in my head." Charlie responded.

"Okay" Alan shrugged.

"It's forty two." Finn tried to keep a straight face.

Charlie, who wasn't familiar with The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galax_y_, looked at him in confusion.

"I'm just yanking your chain, man" Finn said.

"Charlie, you need to give Katrina another chance" Margaret said.

Charlie shook his head and started to put in the dishes more roughly. Just remembering Katrina made him angry.

"Baby, you love to assistant Don with cases, don't you?" she asked.

Charlie nodded.

"Let's say that you are working on an equation for your brother, you could, using your new abilities, get extra data, or know if you're making the wrong assumptions."

Making sure that Alan was absorbed in his book, Charlie whispered ?Like those bank robbers. If I had known from the beginning that they had military training and that they were really after information, I would have come up with right equation on the first try. People would not have been killed. Don would not have been shot? The memory of that shootout came swirling back to him. He relived the panic he felt seeing his brother shot and the knowledge that it was pure luck that he had survived.

"If you don't learn how to control your new abilities, you will go crazy and won't be any good to Don or anyone else." Margaret said. "That's why I wanted you to see Katrina and work with her."

"Isn't there anyone else I could see?"

"Mediums, like geniuses aren't found on every corner" Margaret pointed out.

?I?ll call her? Charlie sighed. ?What?s her number?

Margaret gave it to him and he called. After apologizing, they tried to set up a meeting time.

"How about noon tomorrow, Katrina?" Charlie asked.

"Make it two"

"I'll see you tomorrow then."

To his vexation, Alan had been hearing the tail end of the conversation, as Charlie had been calling from the phone in the kitchen.

"Who's this Katrina?" Alan stood at the doorway to the kitchen, happy that his son seemed to have a date.

TBC


	8. Chapter 8

Someone I met at the park" Charlie lied. He could hear Finn and his mother laughing.

"And you have a date with her?"

"Yes"

999

The next day, Charlie went to see Katrina alone. She gave him a look a few seconds after opening the door for him.

"You told your dad that you had a date with me?"

"He um..."

"Heard you talking to me on the phone in the kitchen next to the living room, where he sat?" Katrina thought that for a closet medium, Charlie was not very discreet.

"Yeah….so…what are the plans for today?"

"I'm going to hide this comb and you're going to find it by reading my mind." Katrina told him.

"This isn't going to help me" Charlie stated simply.

"Why?"

"You're going to do this exercise more than once right?"

"Yeah so?"

"See, eventually, I'll figure out the pattern you use to hide things"

"I don't have a pattern for hiding things." She protested, while trying to hide her exasperation.

Charlie got into lecture mode and explained just how it was possible to find a pattern in how she hid things; he even used pen and paper. Katrina could see the complex equations forming in his head.

"I guess flash cards aren't a good idea either." She sighed.

"Why don't I just help you on a case?" Charlie suggested.

"Or you could tell me about the vision you had involving your brother?"

"I-I saw Don go to a crime..scene…that had the bodies of…several kidnapped kids…" Charlie found it hard to talk about.

"Did you see their faces?"

"Ye-yes" Charlie began to brood. "right after my vision, Don got a call, but it was about a black mailing case."

"It could be from the future" she reminded him. "I know someone in the LAPD. He can help us use the missing person databases."

99

Soon, they were at the desk of Detective John Park. Katrina told him about Charlie's vision and he taught the mathematician how to use the missing person databases.

"He learns quick" he told Katrina as Charlie busily looked for the kids he had seen in his dream.

"Charlie is a math genius"

"You're kidding?"

Time passed, he found one of them.

"She was there!" Charlie emphatically tapped the computer monitor. It had the picture and profile of seven year old Natasha Nichol, who had been missing for over eighteen months. Just then, he had a vision of her, but just standing there shivering, with her arms crossed, vainly tried to get warm. She's wearing only a thin Winnie the Pooh tee, with jeans.

"Did you have a vision of her?" Katrina asked. She could tell because Charlie had a very expressive face.

"I see her, alive, but shivering with cold, and she's wearing the same thing as in this picture." Charlie said with a puzzled look.

"Why don't you see if you can find more of them?" John said "Though I recommend you print that."

Eventually, Katrina tapped him on the shoulder. "John got us some pizza"

"I'm not hungry." He told her. Looking through those databases had engulfed him, as he became more and more obsessed with the kids in his vision.

By the time Katrina and John had their fill of pizza, Charlie found another of the children. Then, he had the same vision, but it involved a little redheaded boy.

"I see him" Charlie pointed to the screen. "Shivering in the cold as well"

"What could that mean?" Park asked.

TBC


	9. Chapter 9

As Charlie searched some more, Alan and Don had dinner at the house.

"You remember that woman I met at the coffee shop?"

"You played chess with her, right, when Alex didn't show?"

"Yeah. We have a date next week." Alan grinned as he took a sip of water.

"That's great dad!" Don said, and then asked. "Speaking of dates, do you know how Charlie's went?"

"He hasn't come home."

"Don't wait up for him." Don smirked as he drank some beer.

"I was so glad when he told me about his date." Alan commented.

Don nodded. Both had worried about the change in Charlie's behavior since the accident.

Charlie came home around midnight at Katrina's insistence. Unfortunately, no more of the children from the crime scene in his vision had been in any of the missing persons databases. When he woke up, he went to the kitchen and saw, to his horror and sadness that the ghosts of the two children, whose names he found, were at the kitchen making faces at him.

"Oh God…." He sat down heavily on the chair and put his face in his hands.

"Charlie?" Alan had heard him from the living room and came into the kitchen. "What's the matter?"

Finn, who had just appeared and started to make faces at the kids, advised "Tell him you're hung-over with a headache the size of a planet." He was not aware that Charlie did not drink often.

"I'm hung-over with a headache the size of a planet." Charlie said too quickly.

"What?"

"Say Katrina is a wine connoisseur and that almost dying gave you a new outlook" Finn corrected, understanding why the mathematician would be hesitant to talk to his father about his new gifts. "Make a face like you have a headache"

"Katrina is a wine connoisseur and almost dying gave me a new outlook" Charlie repeated, trying to appear as though he had a headache.

"Really?" Alan sat down and looked at his youngest with interest.

Instead of answering his father, Charlie began to wonder why only two of the several children had appeared. He had figured since their bodies had been at the same crime scene, their times of death would be close. He also knew that ghosts could appear to him without any effort on his part. This did not make sense. So, he decided to return to his room. As soon as he got there, he thought about how he was going to talk to these children. He was the youngest son and had never babysat for money. Thankfully Margaret showed up. Charlie explained the situation to her and she tried to talk to them.

However, the children showed no interest in answering difficult questions, so they disappeared.

TBC


	10. Chapter 10

Eventually, Charlie came downstairs for dinner, but only because Margaret had insisted on it.

"How's your hangover?" Alan asked.

"Better" Charlie picked at his food and didn't say anything more for the rest of the meal. Alan worried.

999

Still awake, Charlie had a disturbing vision about Don around three in the morning.

_There he was at his apartment, pouring himself some more scotch, and drunkly cursing at the television._

Worried, Charlie biked to Don's apartment and frantically knocked on the door

"Charlie? Are you okay?" a sober, concerned, Don asked. Charlie kicked himself as he realized that his visions could be from the past or future as well as the present. Also, he knew via mind reading that Don had only drunk a couple of beers.

"I...um..." Charlie began lamely.

"Just found out that Katrina is married" Finn suggested.

"Just found out that Katrina is married." Charlie finished.

"I'm so sorry buddy!" . Don said softly.Alan had mentioned over the phone that Charlie had spent the day in his room, with a hangover,and seemed troubled at dinner. This must have been the reason.

"Yeah..." Charlie said lamely.

"Come in. Take a load off."

"Thanks" Charlie felt guilty for making Don worry. He inwardly cringed when he read the mental insults that Don had for Katrina.To avoid the many questions he knew Don would have, he sat on the couch and pretended to focus on the television. Then, an unfamiliar ghost appeared.

"Charles Eppes is a genius mathematician" he began in TV announcer fashion. "Who believes only in what he can quantify, until one day, an accident gives him the ability to communicate with the dead."

"The Algorithums of the Afterlife. Next fall on ABC." another ghost finished.

Charlie sighed. The last thing he needed were looky lou ghosts.

"That is so lame! How about Ghostly Equations?" a third ghost suggested.

"or The mathematics of ..." the first ghost began, but Charlie ,at that point,had grabbed the remote control from the coffee table and raised the volume.

"Charlie! Give me that!" Don got it from him. "You're gonna wake the entire building!"

TBC


	11. Chapter 11

As he lowered the volume on the T.V, Don began to wonder just how intense things had gotten between Charlie and Katrina.

The ghosts continued to bother Charlie some more.

"Next time on 'The Ghosts and Dr. Eppes, Charlie has a chance to tell his brother the shocking truth. Will he?"

The mathematician sighed and put his face in his hands.

"Don't blame yourself, buddy" Don said in a comforting tone as he put a hand on Charlie's shoulder.

"It's..uh...hard not to" Charlie said. "I uh need to go."

"Stay."

"I don't wanna worry dad."

Reluctantly, Don took him back home.

"Call me if you need anything." he told Charlie just before he drove off.

Hours later, Charlie went to see Katrina.

"I saw the ghosts of two of the kids." he told her.

" I see" she replied softly, sensing the anguish within.

"My mom tried to talk to them,but they disapeared."

"It's harder for children to come to terms, dead or alive" she told him.

"Could the other ones still be alive?" Charlie asked "Or could they be visiting with other mediums?"

"I don't know"

TBC


	12. Chapter 12

"I need to see those databases again" Charlie mused aloud with a worried look.

Katrina took him to Park's office, and again he spent hours pouring over those databases.

Around midday, Don came to see how Charlie was doing.

"Where' s Charlie?" he asked Alan upon coming into the house.

"He's with Katrina" Alan said to Don's shock. Charlie had carelessly told his father that he would be spending the day with Katrina due to his concern about those children.

"Oh..." Don tried to appear calm.

"He seemed quite anxious to get out of the house" Alan commented with a huge grin.

"Don't count your grandkids before they hatch, dad" Don told him. "Any idea where he'll be back?"

"He didn't say."

"Well, I uh..gotta go" Don excused himself and thought about he had been told. Maybe Katrina had given Charlie a cock and bull story about only being with her husband for the sake of the kids, or that she was going to divorce him. Discretly, he parked his SUV a few blocks away, and waited for his brother to come home. He used his F.B.I training to hide. As for as Don was concerned, Charlie needed to be set straight.

After a fruitless day and night,the mathematician was dropped off by Katrina around one in the morning . Don noticed that detail. As soon as the car was a good distance away, Don came towards him.

"What the hell is with you man?" he demanded to a startled Charlie when he got into the lawn. "Dad said that you were with Katrina"

"Uh...I can explain...!" Charlie decided that he should tell the truth.The last thing he wanted was for his brother to think ill of him.

"There's nothing to explain!" Don retorted.

"It's not like that!" Charlie began to get annoyed that Don wasn't listening to him. "You don't understand"

"You're screwing someone else's wife and you want me to be understanding?" Don's voice began to rise in volume. His anger and disapointment at Charlie began to boil over. He gave his younger brother a scrowl.

"Would you just listen to me for a second!"

TBC


	13. Chapter 13

"No!You listen to me!" Don fiercly cut him off.

"She's my mentor!" Charlie blurted out.

"In what? Extramarital affairs?" Don replied sardonically.

"See, the accident had a huge effect on me..." Charlie quickly began..

"No shit!" Don snapped. Before more could be said, Don's cellphone vibrated. Sighing he answered. Soon, it became clear that Don had to go. With a glare, he told Charlie. "I gotta go back to work. We'll talk about this later"

9999999

"So, how did things go with Katrina?" Alan asked at breakfasta few hours later.

"Uh..fine.."

"Don came by yesterday to see you"

"Really?" Charlie feigned ignorance. "Did he say why?"

"No...could be work related."

"Could you uh...drop me off at the F.B.I building" Charlie asked. He wanted to tell his brother the truth.

"Sure" Alan figured that if Charlie felt up to going out on hot dates, then he was ready to start working again.

88888

Meanwhile, Don was at the crime scene of the newest victim of a serial killer, who wrote poetry, with a calligraphy pen,on the corpses of his victims. Parks was there and debriefed the agent.

"Glad you could help us" he thanked Don. Then, Katrina entered the scene. Don recognized her because the light in the car had been on the night before.

"This is Katrina Flores" Parks introduced her. "She's a consultant with the D.A."

With all the displine he could muster he shook her hand politly. Katrina recognized the problem right away through mind reading. She had known what Charlie had told Don two nights ago, and had scolded him heartily for it. However, a vision told her of the lastest develpments, but from Don's point of view..

_"What the hell is with you man?"Don accosted a startled Charlie when he got into the lawn. "Dad said that you were with Katrina"_

_"Uh...I can explain...!" ._

_"There's nothing to explain!" Don retorted._

_"It's not like that! You don't understand"_

_"You're screwing someone else's wife and you want me to be understanding?"__His anger and disapointment at Charlie began to boil over. _

_"Would you just listen to me for a second!"_

Don noticed that she was staring into space."Ms Flores?"He tried to hide his irritation and anger. Park hoped that she was getting a helpful vision.

"Yes?"

"You two know each other?" Park asked.

"We have mutual aquaintances" Don said carefully.

The detective showed them the body, then excused himself to organize some things with the uniformed officers.

"So you were there when I dropped him off last night?"

"Yeah" Don figured that she knew that from Charlie.

"The experiance in fugitive recovery must have been useful" She wanted to let Don know of her abilities. "I mean, after..."

"Yeah it was" Don figured that Charlie had told her.

"Yeah" Katrina had been very close to mentioning Don's waiting for a fugitive in a cemetary for two weeks,something Charlie probably did not know about."

Park came back at that very moment. Don and Katrina, using their respective skills and talents examined the body and crime scene.

After some time, and giving her results to Park, she went to her car. Before she could open it, she saw Don come towards her.

"I'd like to talk to you" he said. Katrina could feel the fury behind his words.

TBC


	14. Chapter 14

"You are going to stay away from Charlie" he said in his most menancing voice.

"He comes to me for my skills outside the bedroom" she tried to be diplomatic, and not reveal that Charlie was now a medium.

To Don's exasperation, the phone rang. As he listened to the person on the other end, he mentally used mnemonics to memorize the lisense plate number. Soon, he hung up the cellphone and said. "This isn't the last you've heard from me!"

Quickly, Katrina got into the car, started it, and drove off. Then, she used her own cell phone to call Charlie.

"Yello?" an older voice said. Katrina prayed that Charlie's father hadn't heard about the so called affair from Don.

"Is Charlie home?"

"May I ask who is calling?" Alan wanted to know if it was Katrina.

"Katrina"

"He's working, but I'll tell him you called." Katrina could tell that Alan was happy, to her relief.

Later, Charlie called her back. After wating for his brother for a long time, he called Alan to pick him up.

"I saw your brother at a crime scene"

"What?" Charlie was surprised. The odds of that were rather low, given the amount of crimes and law enforcement personell in Los Angeles."Are you sure it was Don?" Part of him was in denial that things had gotten explosive.

"Who else knows about our alleged affair?"

"What did he tell you?" Charlie knew how his brother could be when provoked.

"He told me to stay away from you." she replied. "When he had to leave after thephone call he told me that it wasn't that last I would hear of him. He als memorized my lisense plate number."

"He confronted me last night." Charlie began "I tried to tell him the truth."

"I know."

"Of course you would" he said lamely.

"This situation is getting too sudsy for me!" she groaned.

"Sudsy?"

"Full of soap suds"

"Huh?"

"Like a soap opera!" she sighed.

"Oh. Anyway, I went to Don's office to try to talk to him, but he didn't show up, so I went home. Knowing him, he'll probably come to the house." Charlie explained." Suddenly, he noticed Don standing behind him. He had been around long enough to hear Charlie's last comment. "I um..gotta go."

"I saw your girlfriend today" Don sneered when the mathematician hung up. "But you knew that"

Charlie nervously looked around to make sure that Alan wasn't home.

"Dad went to the supermarket." Don informed him coldly. "But you were too busy chatting it up with _her_ to notice."

"Hey boys!" Alan came into the house wtih paper grocery bags.

"Let me help you with those dad" Don offered.

"I was thinking about making my famous ribs tonight" Alan said.

"Sounds great!" Don said with false cheerfulness.

"So you're staying for dinner then?" Alan hoped.

"Yeah." Don only did it for appearances. Charlie inwardly sighed as he dreaded what was to be a very long evening.

TBC


	15. Chapter 15

During dinner, Alan noticed that his sons seemed tense, especially Don.

"So, when do we get to meet this Katrina?" Alan asked. Don almost choked on his food.

"Um...when the time is right..." Charlie put a forkful of food in his mouth to avoid having to say any more. After he said that, the beheaded man returned with a vengeance.

"When are you gonna help me, rain man?"

"Leave him alone!" Margaret demanded as she appeared two seconds later.

"Or what? I'm already dead!"

"Why don't I introduce you to another medium, who can better help you?" she decided to try another approach

After some more coaxing from Margaret, the man reluctantly disapeared with her. After a while and some more dinner conversastion, she appeared again.

"I got Katrina to deal with him." she told Charlie, who pretended to listen to Alan talk about something or other.

"Charlie? Are you listening?" Alan sighed.

"He's probably thinking about Katrina" Don thought to himself.

Both brothers wanted to ask their father for privacy to talk, but worried that he would worry because Charlie had told Alan that there was nothing for him to do at the F.B.I office, while Don hadn't come to Charlie in a while for cases. When he got home, Don had a plan.

9999999999999999

The next morning, when Katrina was alone in her house, with Beatrice, her two year old, the door bell rang. Seeing who it was via the peephole, Katrina braced herself.

TBC


	16. Chapter 16

" Good morning Agent Eppes" she tried to sound casual. The baby stared at the stranger.

Don put on his meanest face. "Look, if you want to cheat on your husband, that's your business, but leave Charlie alone!" He, since childhood, had felt it his duty to protect Charlie. A part of him felt that she was taking advantage of Charlie.

"You've got it all wrong!" she attempted to reason with him. "Your brother comes to me for advice..."

"Advice?" Don interupted with a sharp scoff. The only advice, he could see coming from her is how to avoid getting caught by her husband.

"I know that you ..." She began but,Charlie arrived at her driveway on his bike before she could say more. This rather annoyed the medium. Convincing Don of her abilities would have helped start to clear up the misunderstanding. She could not blame him for reacting the way he did. She'd do the same for her own little brother.

"Hey!" Charlie greeted her, then saw Don. He knew that the agent wasn't there for a social call and worried what he might have said. The mathematician knew how his older brother could be when someone incurred his wrath.

"Katrina can't see you now!" Don glared at him. "In fact, she can't see you ever again!"

TBC


	17. Chapter 17

"Don...let me explain..." Charlie began.

"You're coming home!" Don roughly dragged Charlie's bike, flattened the back seats, and put the bike in there. He had driven his SUV to Katrina's house. Charlie had tried to stop his brother, but couldn't.

"Katrina's a medium! So am I!" the professor blurted.

"And I can see the future." Don rolled his eyes. "Come on, let's go!"

"Don..."

"Get in the car!"

"No!"

After some more arguing, Don huffed and said "Do what you want!" Then he went into his SUV and drove off. To him, Charlie's blurting out about being a medium had been some sort of odd joke or something.

"How did you convince your husband that you had the ability to talk to the dead?" Charlie asked back at Katrina's house.

"With a demo"

"I don't think Don will let me do ademo" Charlie sighed.

Katrina, for her part, worried about the consequences of Charlie becoming a recognized medium among law enforcement. She knew how it would bother Charlie, to some degree, especially at first, to not be sought out for his math abilities because he can read minds and communicate with the dead. What of the brother's relationship, once Don believes that Charlie is a medium? Katrina had sensed that the agent sometimes felt overshadowed. That is going to be more of an issue when Charlie can more easily, without math, enter a criminal's mind or communicate with a dead victim, then be the key to solving a case. To make things worse, as a medium, you see the worst of the worst that humans can inflict on others. How would Charlie cope with that?

TBC


	18. Chapter 18

"You think Don's going to resent me?" Charlie asked with a somber face. He had read her mind.

"At first, but I'm sure he'll get over it"

"You're not so sure" Charlie gave her a look. "And you feel that with my new skills, my math abilities will become consideredirrelevant!"

"Charlie..."

"Of course.. who cares about mathematical applications ,when you have someone who can speak to the dead?" Charlie asked rhetorically and bitterly after some thinking.

"Being a medium is a gift and a curse" she told him gently.

"Do you think Don is better off not knowing?"

"That's up to you."

Meanwhile, Don drove and thought about his brother. It seemed to him that the Charlie he knew and grew up with was dying. The old Charlie would not even think about getting involved with a married woman.

"Maybe she reminds him of mom somehow?" the agent mused. "Or getting electrocuted affected his brain."

Unbeknownst to the agent, Margaret sat next to him in the car. She liked to spend time with those she loved, even if,except for Charlie, they could not see her.

"Oh Don..." she shook her head.

TBC


	19. Chapter 19

Back at Katrina's house, Charlie said.

"I need to talk to my mother. She'll know what to do!" The fact that he could say that made him happy,

As if on cue, Margaret was there.

"What should I do, mom?" Charlie asked.

"Talk to your brother. This misunderstanding between has to be settle before it festers. It would be a shame if closeness you two were to end" Margaret advised. She didn't like to see them fighting.

"When should I tell Dad?" Charlie wondered.

"Worry about Don first. You'll need his support to reveal your new talents to your father." his mother pointed out.

"She's right" Katrina said, realizing that, Don could be helpful in the search for those kids.

Charlie waited for him at his apartment. Margaret accompanied him.

"How am I gonna convince Don?" Charlie said.

"You'll need to tell himsomething that only he knows" she advised. They were both in front of the door of the agent's place. An older couple, who lived nearby,stared asit looked like Charlie was talking to himself.

"Like what? You probably know stuff no one else does." Charlie said. Margaret stood in thought for a bit.

"I was thinking of telling you where he had a birthmark, but then your father, and a few others such as exes would know that information" Margaret said. She was wearing the same casual blue outfit that had been her favorite in life.

"But they wouldn't tell me that!" Charlie argued.

"Tell him that you know about Jane Tweed"

"Who's Jane Tweed?" Charlie asked.

"Just tell him that you know all about what happened" Margaret insisted.

"Mom! Please!" Charlie started to get annoyed.

"Just tell him what I just told you"

" Was she married or something?" It was the only explanation Charlie could think of. He was afraid of the answer.

Margaret scolded"Charlie! Don would never date a married women! How could you think that?"

"Was she one of his professors?"It was the next logical choice, in Charlie's view at least.

"No! Charlie! Trust me on this. When have my instincts let you down?"

"Never" Charlie reluctantly admitted.

"Now let's wait for Don."

99999999999999999999999

Back at the house, Don was setting the table, as Alan was preparing something in the kitchen.

"Charlie's probably with his married girlfriend" Don muttered to himself as he put two forks on the table, assuming that Alan was too busy cooking inthe kitchen, but the agent had been wrong.

"Married Girlfriend?" Alan asked.

"It was a joke!" Don insisted as he kicked himself. "I knew you were there Dad!"

"No you weren't. What's going on?" Alan demanded with a stern glare.

Knowing that he had lost, Don hesitantly began. The last thing he wanted to do was worry his father.

"The other night, Charlie came to my place, upset, telling me that he had found out that Katrina was married."

"Oh no!" Alan said with a look of shock and horror.

"The next day, I find out that he went to see her."

Alan then remembered the day when Charlie had a hungover that was worse than usual for him, and had seemed down.

"Are you sure she's married? Maybe Charlie made a mistake?" Alan hoped.

I met her during an investigation,and she wore a ring" Don said gently, sensing the disapointment in his father's eyes.

"All the single women who'd love to have him, and he gets a married woman! I didn't raise you boys to do that!" Alan started to get mad, and resolved to have a very serious talk with Charlie when he got home.

----------------------------

Charlie sighed, as he looked at his watch and noticed that it was eleven at night.

At midnight, Don's voice boomed

"What the hell are you doing here?"

TBC


	20. Chapter 20

"I know about Jane Tweed!" Charlie blurted out,as they both got into the apartment.

"What?" Don kept his face and voice neutral, though that name brought up some memories.

Charlie at that moment had a vision about who this Jane Tweed was.

_A teenage Don is in some small apartment kissing a slightly older woman passionatly,and trying to unbotton her blouse. Charlie focused on what the apartment looked like, knowing that those details would be the key to convincing Don.._

_"Don't put your tongue in my throat" the woman complained."and slow down! I want your first time to be special!"_

Mercifully, the vision ended there.

"You lost your virginity to her in a small apartment with red carpeting, a couch with yellow stripes, a Jimi Hendix poster..."

"Shut up!" Don said with mortified embarassment before Charlie could recite more details.

"I hope you didn't see too much in the vision" Margaret gimaced, but Charlie gave her a reassuring look.

"Mom told me her name, and I got a vision of you kissing her at that apartment." Charlie said. "Now do you believe me?"

"but mom never knew about her!" Don insisted.

"Tell him that I did, and got her to break up with you"

"Momjust told methat she did, and got her to break up with you" Charlie countered.

"Wa-Wait...are you telling me that you're talking to our mother, who passed away?" Don wrinkled his forehead, as he wondered if Charlie was losing a grip on reality, or something.

"Don, what other explanation is there for me knowing that name aside from the fact that mom doesn't want us to fight. That's the only reason she gave it to me." Charlie wanted his big brother to believe him.

Don did some thinking. There was no way that Charlie had any contact with Jane. Telling Charlie the name of that girl to prove his new abilities and reconcile the brothers sounded like something she would do. After some time, he apologized.

"I'm so sorry buddy, so Katrina really is your mentor!" Don said, still not quite grasping that fact that one: mediums did exist, and two his brother was one of them now.

"Mom introduced us." Charlie told him.

"Of course she would" Don said with a smile. Even in death, their mother looked after them."Did you get your new..abilities after the accident?"

"The minute I woke up from my coma!" Charlie said.

"Is mom with you now?" Don asked.

"Yeah. She is."

"Where?"

"On my right side" Charlie said.

"Hi mom!" Don softly said as he looked in the general direction. "I miss you!"

Sadly, Margaret said.."Tell me I miss him too!"She could see the sadness in her eldest's eyes

"Mom misses you too" Charlie said.

"Oh no! Dad's pissed at you!" Don remembered after a pause.

"You told him?" Charlie groaned.

"I muttered it, and he overheard me." Don replied.

"You two have got to talk to him!" Margaret insisted. Decades of marriage told her that time was of the essence. "And convince him!"

"Mom says that we gotta talk to dad" Charlie said. The two brothers were sitting on Don's cheap couch. "And convince him!"

"We gotta tell Dad something that only Mom would know."Don suggested. "To prove that you are talking to her."

"I know just the thing" Margaret said.

"Mom knows just the thing" Charlie said to Don.

"What?" the agent asked.

TBC


	21. Chapter 21

"Tell your father that you know about him seeing Jasmine kissing a younger man at a coffee shop" Margaret said.

"You mean Art's wife? You gotta be kidding!" Charlie couldn't believe it and in his shock, forgot to transmit the information to Don.

"What about Art's wife?" Don asked.

"I'm not, and please tell your brother what I just said." Margaret told her youngest.

"Oh yeah! Sorry!" Charlie said, and passed on the information to Don.

"What?" Don couldn't' believe it. His face of disbelief reminded Margaret of Alan when he was incredulous about something.

"Let's go talk to him!" Charlie suggested, and they all went to Don's SUV.

On the way, Don asked, "Mom, can Dad sense you at all?" The agent wondered if decades of marriage had somehow formed some sort of psychic connection between the couple.

"When I show up in the same room, he stops what he's doing for second, and sometimes even looks around. Unfortunately, he can't hear me at all. Otherwise, he would have cancelled the date with the duck lady! I, out of curiosity, went to Art's class to check her out, and I knew that it would be a disaster." Margaret said.

"Next time you've got a bad feeling about a date, let me know, and I'll pass it along to Dad" Charlie smiled.

Soon, they were at the house. Gingerly, the professor got into it first. Alan was doing crosswords. Sternly, the retiree saw Charlie, took off his glasses, got up, and put on his authoritative voice.

"We need to talk!" No son of his was going to get involved with a married woman if he could help it.

Quickly, Charlie said "I know that you saw Jasmine kissing a younger man at a coffee shop!"

Alan was taken off guard. Then, he got annoyed. Why and when did his wife let this slip?. "What has that got to do with anything?"

"Dad...the accident affected my brain" Charlie began.

"No kidding!" Alan snapped.

"Dad! Charlie got even more abilities because of it!" Don backed up his brother. "He can now read minds and ...speak to the dead. Katrina is his mentor, not girlfriend"

"Excuse me?" Alan gave his sons a 'What the hell' face.

"It's true Dad! I swear! Why else would mom tell me about Jazmine except to prove this to you?" Charlie tried to reason with Alan. "Go ahead! Ask me something that only mom would know!"

"Are you telling me that you are can talk to your mother? What is this?"

"Just ask me something that only she would know!" Charlie insisted.

"What was the exact address of the first apartment she and I had when we first married?" Alan remembered telling the boys only about the general area.

"555 Lane St. Apartment 9b" Charlie said when Margaret gave him the information.

"Who were our neighbors?"

"A family of Cuban immigrants on one side, and a nosy New Yorker on the other" Margaret told Charlie, who repeated the information, then added "You're next question is going to be about the names your professors during your first year of Grad school"

Alan did some thinking. He doubted that Margaret, while alive,would have bothered to tell the boys about the neighbors, the exact address of their first apartment, or the names of his grad school professors. Plus, Charlie had figured out the nextquestion.He then realized that his son was telling the truth. He couldn't believe it! On one hand, Alan was happy that at least one of them could still communicate with Margaret, but on the other, he realized that Charlie would now be able to see what humans shouldn't, to a worse extent than Don.

"You finally believe me!" Charlie realized happily via mind reading.

"I'm sorry that I believed that you would get involved with a married woman!" Alan apologized. He felt guilty.

"Don't worry about it Dad!" Charlie said, and pointing to his left side, added "Mom's standing here"

"How are you doing?" Alan turned to the space. There was more he wanted to say, but it was hard, given that he only had his son as an interpreter. Margaret realized this

"I'm doing fine, sweetie" she said.

"She's doing fine" Charlie passed on.

"Tell your father that I'm glad that he's been keeping his promise to see other people"

"Mom says that she's glad that you've kept your promise to see other people" Charlie passed on.

"I try" Alan said.

"Tell him that he should see if there are places that have speed dating for those over 55" she wanted her husband to be happy.She had read about it once or twice just before getting sick.

Charlie told Alan his wife's suggestion.

"Maybe I should get myself a Russianmail order bride" Alan teased.

Charlie listened to his mother's response and said, with a playful roll of his eyes " Mom thinks that you outta get a couple for the me and Don"

Alan laughed. God he missed her!

TBC


	22. Chapter 22

"Well, I need to talk to Katrina about something" Margaret told Charlie. She wanted to say a few things to Alan, but not in front of her youngest. "I'll see you soon" With that Margaret disapeared.

"Mom needed to talk to Katrina about something" Charlie explained. "So she left."

"Can you call mom if you need to see her?" Don asked, dispointed that his mother left.

"Mom and others..who are... show up whenever they want" Charlie said to his brother and dad's worry.

"Can you read people's minds at will?" Alan asked. The thought worried him, and he knew that it bothered Don.

"No. I just get flashes like ...pictures" the professor explained,but was interupted by that horrible vision:

_Don, with Terry goes to a horrendous crime scene. The mutilated bodies of several kidnapped children are found in a dumpster. Charlie feels his brother's rage, nausea, and budding obsession to find the monster that did this. Don is the one who talks to the medical examiner and the beat cop who found the bodies. Frustration mounts as time passes and there are no leads._

Both Alan and Don noticed the look of horror and sadness in Charlie's eyes.

"Charlie? are you okay?" Alan asked.

"Buddy?"

Just then, Charlie snapped back into reality, and sat down.

"I had the most horrible vision" he explained. "It involved Don going to a crime scene full of children's corpses."

"How many?" Don grew business like, to distance himself.

"Several kids"

"Several? The most I've ever seen at a crime scene is three" the agent pointed out.

"Maybe Charlie can see the future?" Alan dared to asked.

"Take us step by step into your vision" the agent requested.

"Is that really necessary?" Alan asked, feeling protective over Charlie.

"If Charlie's vision is from the future, then maybe there is a way to prevent it!" Don insisted.

"Go ahead" Alan sighed, and realized that the agent was right.

With a sigh, Charlie began.

"You go with Terry to the crime scene..."

"Who called us?" Don asked.

"That's where my vision starts" Charlie explained.

"Okay. Go on."

"The children were all kidnap victims." Charlie added.

"What they the same race?"

" Yeah. All of them are white"

"What are the conditions of the bodies?" Don reluctantly asked, now it total agent mode.

"Mutilated" Charlie said. "They were found in a dumpster. Alan winced, and hated that his younger son had to see such horrific things.

"Do I have any suspects?"

"No." Charlie said.

"What did the medical examiner tell me?"

"That all of them were identifed as kidnapped victims,...I didn't really see much of the conversation" Charlie admitted.

"Have any of them contacted you?"

"Yeah."

"Tell me about it"

Suddenly, the ghost of another of the victims appeared.

TBC


	23. Chapter 23 New Version

Quickly, Charlie introduced himself to the ghost, a blond girl with green eyes. Don caught on.

"This is my brother" the mathematician pointed to the agent. "He's a...cop, and wants to help you." Charlie used the word cop so that the child could quickly understand that Don was a good guy, who got bad guys.

Don carefully lowered himself and gently turned to where Charlie was directing his gentle words.

"How old are ya?" Don asked, to establish rapport.

"Six" the shy little girl told him. Charlie discreetly held up six fingers.

"You're a big girl!" Don smiled, but she cringed, and backed away.

"She's not comfortable with you" Charlie whispered.

Alan, after some time caught on, and wanted to offer the child something, but then he realized that ghosts don't eat. It was surreal, that his own son could talk to ghosts.

Don added, "My brother says that there is a bad man hurting children."

The child shrugged, and fiddled with a toy car that appeared out of no where.

"She's not saying anything." Charlie informed Don.

"What's her body language like?" Don asked his brother

"she's just playing with a toy car."

Don sighed; Charlie lacked the training needed to observe and truly be attuned to body language.

"Is she tense? relaxed?"

"She looks quiet, and unwilling to talk" Charlie told his brother apologetically.

Don continued "Where are you from?"

"San Marino..." the child referred to a small city near Pasadena. With that she disappeared.

Charlie related to a curious Alan the whole conversation, while Don went to make inquires.

As it turned out, there was one child reported missing in San Marino, and it was a blonde child, which Charlie identified as the ghost. Don kept an eye on the case. Thankfully, he and the lead investigator had some mutual friends, he could be in the loop without getting into trouble.

Weeks passed and there were no leads to the distress of everyone involved; Charlie continued to see Katrina for help and mentoring. She found him to be a difficult student, most of the time.

"he thinks he knows everything, and discounts what he doesn't understand, or believe in" the woman complained to her husband when their children had gone to bed.

"sounds like a lot of the people I work with" the husband said.

"His mother tells me to be patient with him"

-----------------------------------------------------

Charlie sometimes found it hard to teach, as sometimes, he'd hear the the thoughts of his students, or see ghosts.

At Cal Sci, scandal broke out. Thanks to Katrina's discreet efforts, and her cop friends, Nina Karensky was arrested for the murders she so coldly committed. Larry, of course, was in shock and couldn't believe it.

"She was one of my best students..." he murmured to Charlie and Amita as the trio walked to one of the cafeterias. "It's a mistake!"

Charlie comforted his friend, but kept his new abilities to himself: only Don and Alan knew about them.

The retiree once or twice asked Charlie to guess some lotto numbers for him. The mathematician of course, lectured Alan about how he was more likely to get a straight flush or be struck by lightening than to win any significant amount of money.

"But most people don't have psychic sons!" Alan persisted.

Charlie refused to give any suggestions, causing the older man to grumble.

For the most part, though Alan worried about Charlie's new abilities, and their effects on his youngest. Every morning, he asked the mathematician how he slept, made him tea, and just kept an extra eye.

-----------------------------------------

One day, Charlie woke up only to find the ghost of the blonde, green eyed child yo-yoing near his dresser. Quickly, he called Don.

"Don! She's back!"

TBC


	24. Chapter 24

"Try to keep her where she is" Don quickly advised. "I'm on my way!"

Charlie hung up the phone, and told the girl "You're uh...quite good with the yo yo..."

She just shrugged and continued her activity.

He asked her about the yo yo and who taught her to use it.

"My mommy teached me" she said, adding sadly "I miss her"

"I used to miss my mom when I didn't see her..." Charlie commiserated. He was afraid to ask any of the hard questions, fearing that she'd disappear on him again. He'd leave that to his trained brother.

Finally, Don arrived. Charlie mentioned that the child talked about missing her mother, and that she was still yo-yoing.

Gently, Don went to where his brother said the girl played with her yo-yo.

"You..know I miss my mom alot...I haven't seen her for so long" he remarked gently. She just continued to yo-yo. Charlie told his brother this in a very soft whisper. The agent asked for a yo-yo.

"I might have seen one in the Garage" Charlie mused after doing some thinking.

"Find it and ask her to teach you"

"okay..." Charlie followed his brother's directions. Don's plan was to gain a bond and some trust with the poor child.

Eventually, as the lesson passed, and with Don's coaching Charlie on what to say, the little girl began to open up a little.

"The ugly man in the library yo yoed..."

"oh yea..." Don felt sad for the child.

"I sawed him at the library" she continued with reluctance.

"What color was his hair?" Don asked when Charlie relayed her remarks.

"yellow"

Charlie mouthed "yellow."

"What color were his eyes?"

"blue " she stopped yo yoing. "he worked there"

The two brothers looked at each other when CHarlie repeated what she had just said., but before he could ask more, the little girl became upset, and disappeared.

"We gotta talk to the lead detective!" Charlie demanded, and started to leave.

"Whoa ..wait a minute..." Don held out his hands. "We gotta approach this carefully, buddy...First off, are they gonna believe you?"

"Katrina helps cops..." Charlie pointed out, giving Don an idea, which would fulfill two goals: that the new information would be shared, and Charlie's new skills would be kept a secret. The agent worried about Charlie being exploited.

"Let's do this: We're gonna go tell Katrina about what just happened, and she's gonna talk to the lead detective of the case, pretending that she saw the girl. I mean, she's already got cred with law enforcement, and could get references from other cops. "

"okay...sure.."

They went to see Katrina, who was at home with her youngest daughter. Don had apologized toher soon after finally learning about Charlie's new abilities.

"I'll do that. " she promised "I gotta know in detail everything that's gone on. "

--------------------------------------------------------

Charlie filled her in, and later she went to see the lead detective, who was at first skeptical when she told him that she was a psychic.

Sitting at his desk, tie loose, and without the suit jacket covering the gun belt, he told her dryly."It galls me how the department can't afford to give officers a better salary, but can pay someone to say 'I sense that it was homicide by murder' . "

"I've got references. " she calmly opened her bag, and gave him the business cards of some of detectives she's worked with. "And for this case, I'll work pro bono"

"oh?"

"How's your dominatrix, by the way?" she asked casually, in a low voice.

"Excuse me?"

"You know who I mean. You pay for services by being her security consultant. " she took a risk in incurring his wrath and getting kicked out, but had to prove her abilities by mentioning something that no one else could possibly know.

Finally believing her, he asked"Why don't you tell me what you know?"

TBC


	25. Chapter 25

She told him about what the little girl had said. The detective asked a barrage of questions.

"did she describe him?"

"blue eyes and yellow hair" Katrina said somberly.

"at least this narrows it down..." he mused. "I'll return to the San Marino Public Library."

-----------------------------------

He again questioned most everyone who worked at the library;employee and volunteer alike. For each of them, he brought up the subject of yo-yoing by pretending that it was his way or relaxing. Two people told him about enjoying the activity as kids,while another three mentioned indulging in it occasionally. Three of these people were men, and two of them fit the vague description. So, unofficially, the lead detective, named Frank Hernandez, had two suspects. Now, he needed further official evidence to go beyond questioning.

----------------------------------------------------------

Katrina's next 'lesson' with the mathematician was in the Eppes house. Charlie suggested it at Alan's behest.

"It's not fair for her to be the host all the time" the older man scolded.

Alan welcomed her wholeheartedly to the house when she entered. Her youngest was in day care.

"Come in! Would you like something to eat or drink?"

"No thank you"

"Charlie in the back yard, feeding the Koi. He'll be here soon" Alan assured her, and added "I really appreciate you taking the time to help Charlie. It hasn't been easy for him."

"thanks" she said, and then seemed to remember something " Your wife came to see me last night"

"oh?" Alan's eagerness showed in his voice and on his face.

"There's a professor at Cal Sci; Margaret thinks that you and her could go to lunch sometime." Katrina said, and at once had a vision of Charlie telling Don, at the front steps of the Eppes home_ "He's dating my boss, of course I'm gonna have issues" _Alan had broken up with Ana Bautista, a major rival of Charlie's, two months before. The Mathematician's vision about them talking being married was actually a daydream in Ana Bautista's mind that Charlie had somehow picked up.

"What's her name?" Alan asked with surprise.

"Mildred Finch.She's a math professor at Cal Sci."

It felt strange to Alan that his wife would set him up on dates. "I've already got a date with a fellow volunteer at the shelter for tonight. Her name is Sarah"

"Yeah..about that..." Katrina hesitated " Margaret says that uh...she noticed a very white area on the finger, where a wedding ring would go..."

"What?"

Just then, Charlie came in.

"Sorry I'm late..." he said lamely. "I had to feed the Koi."

"It's okay..." Katrina assured him.

As they had their lesson, Alan canceled his date.

---------------------------------------------------------

That night, as Alan prepared dinner, the two brothers sat in the living room. There, Charlie made a request.

"Don, could you teach me how to question witnesses and victims?"

"What?" the agent turned to his brother in surprise.

"We can't assume that you'l always be able to drop everything and come whenever I happen to see the ghost of someone who was murdered." Charlie pointed out. "If I could at least learn a few basics, then I could put my talents to better use"

Don didn't say anything at first. His protective side didn't like that idea. "I don't know, buddy"

Charlie sighed, "Look, I've seen alot already, and will see ever more."

After some back and forth, Don finally agreed."Let me put together some stuff, and we can start lessons this weekend, if nothing comes up" he promised.

"Thanks bro!" Charlie smiled.

-----------------------------------------------

Discreetly, Margaret leaned on the counter while Alan cooked, feeling conflicted. Katrina had told her about a vision she had.

"_So, I saw clearly" Katrina said, "Charlie complain to his brother about the fact that their father was dating his boss"_

_"So Mildred Finch is to become Department Chair?" Margaret asked._

_"Yep."_

She wanted Alan to be happy,not at at the expense of having father/son conflicts. Could Charlie handle it? Well, he had matured some since she passed.

_"I've got a feeling that Charlie would get over it" Katrina assured her during that conversation. "He was more annoyed than angry in the vision"_

As Margaret did some thinking, Alan got the feeling that he wasn't alone in the kitchen, and looked around.

TBC


	26. Chapter 26

One morning a few days later, Charlie, over breakfast, shared a dilemma with Alan.

"I had a dream, but in it I was Don" the professor began. "I...as Don sat on ..his bed, drinking beer while watching a Hockey game in the..apartment. Next to me is ..his...girlfriend, a junior agent named Liz Warner. He tells her that they...kept coming back out of habit, and that she deserved so much more. She gets up, leaves her key on a counter, and says 'see ya tomorrow boss..."

"How do you know that this isn't an ex girlfriend?" Alan asked. "Donnie was working here in L.A for a while before you started helping him on cases"

"I discreetly asked around, and there isn't a Liz Warner on Don's floor. See, Don and She will work together"

"She could be on another floor..."

"Dad, trust me, she has yet to get posted in L.A" Charlie insisted, and asked. "Should I tell Don about my dream?Or should I just let things run their course and give Don advice when they do start dating?"

Alan thought for a minute and then advised "Why don't we wait until she's in LA and dating Donnie.?" It seemed to be the wiser course. The retiree hoped that maybe between now and whenever this mystery woman appeared, Don could overcome his issues, especially those regarding commitment and workaholism. Besides, Don wouldn't listen to relationship advice from Charlie, especially when it was about a woman he wasn't even involved with.

"You could give Don subtle advice then" Charlie agreed.

--------------------------------------------

After his first class of the day, Charlie went to see his good friend, Larry to tell him about his new abilities, feeling that this was overdue. Tentatively, the younger professor came in and greeted his friend, who read at a very cluttered desk.

"Larry?" Charlie tried to get his friend's attention. After a few moments, Larry looked up and happily greeted Charlie. In return, the mathematician began, "Do you have a minute? I'd like to talk?"

"Certainly" Larry put down his book with concern, and sense that his friend had something very important to say.

Charlie got some books off a chair, and sat on it. "Remember when I had my accident?"

"How could I forget?" Larry shuddered.

"It affected me...in..ways beyond the physical" Charlie tried to explain

"Are you referring to effects having to do with the spiritual?" Larry speculated that maybe Charlie had decided to explore the spiritual side of life.

"yes and no" Charlie replied. "It depends on how you define the word spiritual"

"What's your definition?" Larry's head filled with possibilities. Charlie had seemed a little different, especially right after the accident, but the physicist had no idea that it could be something spiritual.

Taking a deep breath, Charlie said, "I can read minds and communicate with the dead."

TBC


	27. Chapter 27

**Sorry about the delay! The muse is very fickle. **

**--**

"Read minds and communicate with the dead??" Larry repeated with great incredulity. He knew that Charlie didn't believe in psychics.

"Yes Larry. In fact, I was talking to my uh..mother yesterday about how to break this to you" Charlie quickly added nervously.

"Your mother??" Larry didn't know what to think. Charlie would never claim to talk to his late mother as a joke, given how close the latter had been with her.

"Getting electrocuted somehow gave me the ability to get a glimpse at the beyond" the mathematician felt that this sounded very very lame.

Larry, at this point, had two choices: Believe that yes, indeed Charlie could speak with the dead, or maybe start fearing that Charlie's grip on sanity and reality had broken. The physicist, choose to not only believe Charlie, but to request a 'demonstration of these powers'

"What uh...did you have in mind Larry?" Charlie asked with some relief. Don and Alan hadn't been so quick to beleive.

"I'd like to talk with my mother" Larry could barely remember her, having been very young when she died.

"It..uh...doesn't work quite like that I'm afraid" the mathematician said apologetically, scratching his chin. "The uh...those who are...not among us have to uh...show themselves...so to speak"

"so the dead have to come to you?

"yeah..."

Larry's face grew sad with disappointment, making Charlie feel guilty.

"Promise me that if my mother contacts you, I'll get a phone call, day or night?" Larry looked at his good friend somberly.

"You have my word" Charlie agreed.

"Can you read minds at will?"

"Sometimes, I get pictures in my head of what people are thinking."

"Have you used your new abilities to help Don with cases?"

Charlie answered by telling his good friend about the suffering children.

"What you've got, is a gift, and a curse" Larry whispered with great sympathy.

--

A phone call from Katrina interupted the conversation.

"The police have a suspect in custody!"

"What?"

"The guy was getting busted for something else. Cops found a yo yo, and bloody girl clothes... Guess what! He's retired and lives in San Marino! The lead detective just called me."

"Do you need me there?"

"I'm a mind reader too, remember? But you can come if you want. I'll pull some strings so you can be a part of it." she gave him the address of where the suspect was being held.

--

With alactrity, Charlie left Cal Sci, and went to be there for the interrogation. The man, in his fifties, had dark brown hair, and wore a shirt, and jeans. Just looking at him, one would not think that he was a pervert. Charlie, and Katrina suffered the misfortune of reading his memories having to do with his horrible deeds, both, after a while, could barely contain the desire to vomit.

At first, the interogation itself was routine, and like many others Charlie had seen Don, or members of the latter's team do. However, during the second hour, the little blond girl showed up, as did a few others, some familiar to Charlie. They all looked scared, and huddled close to Katrina, who saw them as well. In a very motherly way, she told them that they were safe now, and asked if that was the bad 'man.' Some pointed, while others nodded gingerly.

Charlie thought, wistfully, "If only ghosts could testify in court"

TBC


	28. Chapter 28

Since the detectives couldn't see, or use the ghosts' identification in court, the investigation had to go on. Life continued for Charlie, and Katrina.

A week later, Charlie went to see his brother, who greeted him sourly, without bothering to look up from the reports at his desk.

"Gropes didn't' have microscope slides of his victims' blood, at his house, or anything else we could use" Don referred to a vision Charlie had insisted was about a major case the former and his team were slaving over.

"But my vision…" Charlie sank into the old, dingy office chair.

"Could have been about someone else…." Don told him.

"I had that vision when I was knee deep in data for this case!" Charlie protested.

"Did you actually see the suspect?"

"I saw two hands organizing microscope slides of blood samples! They looked like his"

"You mean, like a man's…?" Don tried to be patient.

"I. ..guess.." Charlie reluctantly admitted, feeling guilty. When would he learn that his visions could be about the past, present or future, and about anyone?

There was a pause, as Don thought about how to tackle the next subject. An ambush seemed in order. "What's up with Liz Warner?"

"Huh?" Charlie vainly tried to feign ignorance.

"Terry heard that you've been askin' around for an Agent Liz Warner." Don ignored his brother's attempt to play dumb. "I kinda remember having a student by that name, when I taught at Quantico. What's going on?"

"I didn't have a dream about her. See, the name of the person in my dream was Ms. Warmer. I misheard" Charlie lied. "It wasn't until a second vision, that I got the name right."

Don asked in an tone of annoyed incredulity. "How can you mishear something in a dream??"

"She spoke very softy, and uh….there were planes landing nearby…"

"Planes?"

"Her and I talked near an airport runway" Charlie didn't like lying to his brother.

"About?"

"…I can't really get into details. Ms. Warmer is uh.a .part of the beyond….all I can say is that I gotta deliver a message…."

"Why would a ghost talk to you in a noisy environment?" Don, knowing his brother very well, knew that Charlie was hiding something.

"She was a pilot. Planes to her…are…were what chalkboards are to me."

"What about the second vision?"

"Same place"

"oh yeah?

Before Don could push his brother any more, the agent got an urgent call from David, who was doing legwork.

"I gotta go" Don put his phone away, and got up. "We'll talk later"

Relieved, Charlie returned home and worried about how to keep the information from Don. He knew his brother would avoid seeing seeing this Liz Warner to begin with, eventhough, it would make more sense to work through whatever issues caused or will have caused him to break up her.

A heavy workload another kept Don busy for two weeks. Finally, when it was just Don, and Charlie eating steaks with baked potatoes, the agent was about to broach the subject, when, the kitchen phone rang.

Seeing this as an opportunity, Charlie jumped to get it.

"It's me" Katrina sounded tired, and the mathematician could hear the woman's youngest daughter wailing on the background. "I've uh….got some bad news...there's been a snag on the case."

TBC

_A/N: I, for now, plan to end this fic in 1-3 Chapters. Thanks to everyone for the support, and patience._


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